On the night of August 1, in the Bitcoin blocker on block 478 484, activation of UASF (user-activated soft-key), also known as BIP 148 - sensational in its time offering to scale the network of bitcoins, occurred. As a result of the activation of the BIP 148, no network separation occurred.
Confrontation between UASF and SegWit2x supporters
Recall, the goal of UASF is to start the activation of the Segregated Witness (SegWit) protocol in the blockchain, where all user nodes with SegWit support reject all blocks that do not signal the protocol support from August 1, 00:00 UTC.
Such a plan could serve to divide the chain and the emergence of two separate blockhouses - the old and the new (not to be confused with Bitcoin Cash), because of the different views between users and the Bitcoin network leaders. The second, actively defended the decision to scale the network with the name SegWit2x. Approximately 88% of the miners signal the support of SegWit2x at the time of publication.
Two road maps for scaling the network of bitcoins - SegWit2x and UASF caused constant controversy and numerous discussions among users of bitcoin. This raised fears for the entire crypto-currency community and the strong volatility of the crypto-currency market, which could be observed for the last month and a half.
BIP 91 - fast and secure implementation of SegWit
In June, BitmainWarranty engineer James Hilliard introduced a new solution called BIP 91 as a way to quickly and safely implement SegWit without causing the separation of Bitcoin's blockbuster.
The peculiarity of BIP 91 was that it does not conflict with UASF and in general it does the same thing as soft frock. On the other hand, BIP 91 is the first stage of the SegWit2x implementation of the hardware (UAHF), the support of which provides more than 80% of the current miners. Thus, the crypto-exchange community has reached a certain consensus.
On July 23, BIP 91 was activated in the Bitcoin network with the support of more than 80% of the miners. This event was a significant date, because from this day the alarm period began to support SegWit. Now, BIP 91 performed the same function as UASF, even before the activation of the second one, which means that the two solutions are fully compatible and the chance of splitting the bitcoin network was minimized.
The activation of the BIP 91 patch in the bitcoin code forced all other miners who were not included in the number of supporting BIP 91 and BIP 141 to signal SegWit support. If they did not do this, their extracted blocks were simply rejected by the majority and they lost the award at 12.5 BTC for each block they extracted. Thus, the necessary majority of 95% of the support for the Segregated Witness protocol was achieved.
Is there no separation of the network?
In turn, now there is every reason to believe that activation of SegWit in Bitcoin code will still happen.
Recall, at present there is a period of fixing the SegWit protocol. The support level is 100%.
Despite the fact that we managed to avoid splitting as a result of the activation of UASF, this does not mean that the separation of the Bitcoin blockbuster should not be expected. According to the latest information, Bitcoin Cash activation (BCC) was activated today at 15:00, and activation of SegWit2x is planned for the autumn of 2017, which will also lead to the appearance of a separate blockchain with a new crypto currency based on the original copy of Bitcoin.